Foster care and adoption; toddlers to young adults; it's all here-- faith and humor meet as this mom of four chronicles the joy and heartbreak of motherhood.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

August, 2008-- I want to be a grandpa

When
my son Liam was in kindergarten, I asked the boys what they wanted to be when
they grew up. Jacob answered quickly with his usual, “marine biologist,” but
Liam paused.

“A
grandpa,” he finally said. “That looks like fun. I want to be a grandpa.”

While
I knew that eventually I would need to break it to Liam that grandparenting was
not a viable career choice—especially right out of college— I could completely
understand why he said what he did.

At
the time, my father (the grandfather Liam saw most often) was in his early
sixties and newly retired. He played on two over-55 softball leagues in the
summer and a bowling league in the fall and winter. He ran three miles a few
days a week, and often showed up at the boys’ soccer games on his bike. When the
boys visited my parents, it was grandpa who provided most of the
entertainment—taking them to the playground for a game of tennis, football or
strikeout. To Liam, being a grandpa was the perfect job — deliver Meals on
Wheels a few days a week, go to daily Mass and spend the rest of your time
playing sports.

While
10-year-old Liam is now old enough to understand he can’t skip over young and
middle adulthood and jump right into retirement, his comment has stuck with me.
Since that time, my dad has dropped his bowling league, but has added two hours
of competitive table tennis to his weekly schedule. He’s 68.

While
Liam doesn’t know it, his desire to be a sporty grandfather has helped to shape
decisions Bill and I have made about athletics and our children. Jacob, 13 and
Liam are reasonably good athletes, but so far have not been the star of any of
their teams. While many parents of children the same age as Jacob and Liam have
their kids on competitive, traveling club teams, we have chosen not to go that
route.

And
part of the reason is we want them to be active grandpas.

Specializing
in a sport at age 10 may put a child on a path that will be more likely to
include a spot on a college team, but studies show it is also more likely to
lead to sports injuries at a younger age. It also contributes to a family
lifestyle that is built around sports schedules and can’t-miss tournaments. I
suspect it can also cause some children to over-define themselves — “I’m a
soccer player; I’m not good at basketball.”

Right
now, in the U.S., children and sports seem to be having a moment of
polarization. On one hand are too many inactive children—obesity and Type 2
diabetes are on the rise as too many kids eat chips and play video games
instead of going outside for neighborhood touch-football or tag. On the other
hand are children as young as eight and nine practicing four days a week and
crossing state lines to play in tournaments against other third and fourth
graders. These kids don’t have time for tag.

While
the parent of an unusually gifted and passionate athlete has a responsibility
to make sure their child receives proper guidance and coaching, gifted athletes
are rare. Examination of data of high school athletes reveals that only about
five percent of them go on to play NCAA sports — in any of the three divisions.
Less than one-tenth of one percent of high school athletes go on to play
professionally.

While
it sure would be fun to be the parent of Michael Phelps or Nastia Liukin, the
fact is that most kids fall somewhere on the athletic spectrum between “pretty
average” and “doing really well.”And
even among the kids doing really well, I question whether their club team is so
incredibly exceptional that they need to leave a metro area of a million people
to find another group of kids their age who can give them a good game.

In
parents’ effort to give the best to our children in all things, we may be
losing sight of what the goal of athletics should be. With a few exceptions, we
don’t need to be grooming kids for collegiate careers when they haven’t yet
lost all their baby teeth. Instead, let’s look long term. Will Jacob rather
swim or play baseball after work when he’s 30? What sports will my daughters
Jamie and T have time for when they’re forty-something moms? Will Liam rather
go running or biking when he’s sixty?For all of my kids, it’s too soon to call it, so I won’t even try. I’ll
just sign them up for one more sport through our local recreation department.
And maybe someday, their children’s children will watch them and say,“I want to be a grandpa when I grow up.”

About Me

Annemarie writes locally and nationally on foster care, adoption, parenting and spirituality. She is responsible for the content in At Home with Our Faith (circulation 80,000), which has won the First Place award in its category from the Associated Church Press for three consecutive years. Her Training Wheels column has appeared in the Milwaukee Catholic Herald since 2002 and most of these blogs appeared first in her Training Wheels column or as a chapter of her book, Discovering Motherhood (Ambassador Press, 2006). She is married to Bill, with four children (two biological, two adopted), and works in a job-share position at Johnson Controls as director of Corporate Programs in Diversity and Public Affairs.